The Crymble place was a full half mile outside the village of Smyrna,
but Cap'n Sproul and his victim covered the distance at a lively pace
and swung into the yard at a dog-trot. Batson Reeves was just
blanketing his horse, for in his vigorous courtship forenoon calls
figured regularly.
"My Gawd!" he gulped, fronting the Cap'n and staring at his captive
with popping eyes, "I knowed ye had a turrible grudge agin' me, Sproul,
but I didn't s'pose you'd go to op'nin' graves to carry out your spite
and bust my plans."
"He didn't happen to be anchored," retorted the Cap'n, with cutting
reference to the granite statue in Smyrna's cemetery. "Ahoy, the
house, there!"
Mrs. Crymble had been hastening to the door, the sound of her suitor's
wagon-wheels summoning her. A glimpse of the tall figure in the yard,
secured past the leaves of the window geraniums, brought her out on
the run.
Mrs. Delora Crymble, whose natural stock of self-reliance had been
largely improved by twenty years of grass-widowhood, was not easily
unnerved.
But she staggered when searching scrutiny confirmed the dreadful
suspicion of that first glimpse through the geraniums. For
precaution's sake Cap'n Sproul still held Mr. Crymble by the
scrabbled cloth in the back of his coat, and that despairing
individual dangled like a manikin. But he braced his thin legs
stubbornly when the Cap'n tried to push him toward the porch.
"If married couples are goin' to act like this on judgment mornin',"
muttered the mediator, "it will kind o' take the edge off'm the
festivities. Say, you two people, why don't you hoorah a few times
and rush up and hug and kiss and live happy ever after?"
But as soon as Mrs. Crymble could get her thin lips nipped together
and her hands on her hips she pulled herself into her accustomed
self-reliant poise.
"It's you, is it, you straddled-legged, whittled-to-a-pick-ed
northin' of a clothes-pin, you? You've sneaked back to sponge on me
in your old age after runnin' off and leavin' me with a run-down farm
and mortgidge! After sendin' me a marked copy of a paper with your
death-notice, and after your will was executed on and I wore mournin'
two years and saved money out of hen profits to set a stun' in the
graveyard for you! You mis'sable, lyin' 'whelp o' Satan!"
"There wa'n't no lie to it," said Mr. Crymble, doggedly. "I did die.
I died three times--all by violent means. First time I froze to death,
second--"
"Let up on that!" growled the Cap'n, vigorously shaking Mr. Crymble.
"This ain't no dime-novel rehearsal. It's time to talk business!"
"You bet it's time to talk business!" affirmed the "widow." "I've
paid off the mortgidge on this place by hard, bone labor, and it's
willed to me and the will's executed, and now that you've been proved
dead by law, by swanny I'll make you prove you're alive by law before
you can set foot into this house."
"And I'll go and buy the law for you!" cried Batson Reeves, stripping
the blanket off his horse. "I'll drive straight to my brother
Alcander's law office, and he'll find law so that a hard-workin'
woman can't be robbed of her own."
"Oh, he'll find it, all right!" agreed the Cap'n, sarcastically. "And
if he don't find it ready-made he'll gum together a hunk to fit the
case. But in the mean time, here's a man--" he checked himself and
swung Mr. Crymble's hatchet face close to his own. "How much money
have you got?" he demanded. "Have you come back here strapped?"
"I ain't got any money," admitted Mr. Crymble, "but I own a secret
how to cure stutterin' in ten lessons, and with that school-house
that--"
"You don't dock in any school-house nor you don't marine railway into
our poorhouse, not to be a bill of expense whilst I'm first
selectman," broke in Cap'n Sproul with decision. "That's official,
and I've got a license to say it."
"You think you've got a license to stick your nose into the business
of every one in this town because you're first selectman," roared
Reeves, whipping out of the yard; "but I'll get a pair of nippers
onto that old nose this time."
"Here's your home till further orders," said the Cap'n, disregarding
the threat, "and into it you're goin'."
He started Mr. Crymble toward the steps.
Mrs. Crymble was pretty quick with the door, but Cap'n Sproul was
at the threshold just in time to shove the broad toe of his boot
between door and jamb. His elbows and shoulders did the rest, and
he backed in, dragging Mr. Crymble, and paid no attention whatever
to a half-dozen vigorous cuffs that Mrs. Crymble dealt him from
behind. He doubled Mr. Crymble unceremoniously into a calico-covered
rocking-chair, whipped off the hard hat and hung it up, and took from
Mr. Crymble's resisting hands the little valise that he had clung
to with grim resolution.
"Now, said Cap'n Sproul, you are back once more in your happy home
after wanderin's in strange lands. As first selectman of this town
I congratulate you on gettin' home, and extend the compliments of
the season." He briskly shook Mr. Crymble's limp hand--a palm as
unresponsive as the tail of a dead fish. "Now," continued the Cap'n,
dropping his assumed geniality, "you stay here where I've put you.
If I catch you off'm these primises I'll bat your old ears and have
you arrested for a tramp. You ain't northin' else, when it comes to
law. I'm a hard man when I'm madded, Crymble, and if I start in to
keelhaul you for disobeyin' orders you'll--" The Cap'n did not
complete the sentence, but he bent such a look on the man in the chair
that he trembled through all his frail length.
"I wisht I could have stayed dead," whimpered Mr. Crymble, thoroughly
spirit-broken.
"It might have been better all around," agreed the Cap'n, cheerfully.
"But I ain't no undertaker. I'm a town official, sworn to see that
paupers ain't poked off onto the taxpayers. And if you want to keep
out of some pretty serious legal trouble, Mis' Crymble, you'll mind
your p's and q's--and you know what I mean!"
Feeling a little ignorant of just what the law was in the case, Cap'n
Sproul chose to make his directions vague and his facial expression
unmistakable, and he backed out, bending impartial and baleful stare
on the miserable couple.
When he got back to the town office he pen-printed a sign, "Keep Out,"
tacked it upon the outer door, set the end of his long table against
the door for a barricade, and fell to undisturbed work on the figures.
And having made such progress during the day that his mind was free
for other matters in the evening, he trudged over to Neighbor Hiram
Look's to smoke with the ex-showman and detail to that wondering
listener the astonishing death-claims of the returned Mr. Crymble.
"Grampy Long-legs, there, may think he's dead and may say he's dead,"
remarked Hiram, grimly, "but it looks to me as though Bat Reeves was
the dead one in this case. He's lost the widder."
Cap'n Sproul turned luminous gaze of full appreciation on his friend.
"Hiram," he said, "we've broke up a good many courtships for Reeves,
you and me have, but, speakin' frankly, I'd have liked to see him
get that Crymble woman. If she ain't blood kin to the general manager
of Tophet, then I'm all off in pedigree, I don't blame Crymble for
dyin' three times to make sure that she was a widder. If it wasn't
for administerin' town business right I'd have got him a spider-web
and let him sail away on it. As it is, I reckon I've scared him about
twenty-four hours' worth. He'll stick there in torment for near that
time. But about noon to-morrow he'll get away unless I scare him again
or ball-and-chain him with a thread and a buckshot."
"I'm interested in freaks," said Hiram, "and I'll take this case off
your hands and see that the livin' skeleton don't get away until we
decide to bury him or put him in a show where he can earn an honest
livin'. Skeletons ain't what they used to be for a drawin'-card, but
I know of two or three punkin circuiters that might take him on."
In view of that still looming incubus of the unfinished town report,
Cap'n Sproul accepted Hiram's offer with alacrity.
"It ain't that I care so much about the critter himself," he confided,
"but Bat Reeves has got his oar in the case, and by to-morrow the
whole town will be watchin' to see which gets the upper hands."
"I'll camp there," promised Hiram, "and I don't reckon they can do
old dead-and-alive to any great extent whilst I've got my eye on 'em."
Cap'n Sproul barricaded his door again the next day and disregarded
ordinary summons at the portal. But along in the afternoon came one
who, after knocking vainly, began to batter with fists and feet, and
when the first selectman finally tore open the door with full
determination to kick this persistent disturber off the steps, he
found Hiram Look there. And Hiram Look came in and thumped himself
into a chair with no very clearly defined look of triumph on his face.
"He ain't dead again, is he?" demanded Cap'n Sproul, apprehensively.
"No, he ain't, and that's where he loses," replied the old showman.
He chafed his blue nose and thumped his feet on the floor to warm
them. It was plain that he had been long exposed to the December wind.
"Law," announced Hiram, "has got more wrinkles in it than there are
in a fake mermaid's tail. Do you know what kind of a game they've
gone to work and rigged up on your friend, the human curling-tongs?
The widder has got him to doin' chores again. It seems that she was
always strong on keepin' him doin' chores. He's peckin' away at that
pile of wood that's fitted and lays at the corner of the barn. He's
luggin' it into the woodshed, and three sticks at a time make his
legs bend like corset whalebones. Looks like he's got a good stiddy
job for all winter--and every once in a while she comes out and yaps
at him to prod him up."
"Well, that gets him taken care of, all right," said the Cap'n, with
a sigh of relief.
"Yes, he's taken care of," remarked Hiram, dryly. "But you don't
understand the thing yet, Cap'n. On top of that woodpile sets Bat
Reeves, lappin' the end of a lead-pencil and markin' down every time
old water-skipper there makes a trip."
"Well, if it amuses him, it takes care of him, too," said the Cap'n.
"Looks innercent, childlike, and sociable, hey?" inquired the
showman, sarcastically. "Well, you just listen to what I've dug up
about that. Bat Reeves has bought the strip of ground between the
woodpile and the shed door by some kind of a deal he's rigged up with
the widder, and with Alcander Reeves advisin' as counsel. And he's
got a stake set in the middle of that piece of ground and on that
stake is a board and on that board is painted: 'Trespassing Forbidden
on Penalty of the Law.' And him and that woman, by Alcander Reeves's
advice, are teaming that old cuss of a husband back and forth acrost
that strip and markin' down a trespass offence every time he lugs
an armful of wood."
The Cap'n blinked his growing amazement.
"And the scheme is," continued Hiram, "to have old law shark of an
Alcander, as trial justice, sentence the livin' skeleton on each
separate trespass offence, fine and imprisonment in default of
payment. Why, they've got enough chalked down against him now to make
up a hundred years' sentence, and he's travellin' back and forth
there as innercent of what they're tryin' to do as is the babe
unborn."
"Can they do any such infernal thing as that in law?" demanded the
Cap'n.
"Blamed if I know. But I never see northin' yet they couldn't do in
law, if they see you comin' and got the bind on you."
"Law!" roared Cap'n Sproul, clacking his hard fist on the table rim.
"Law will tie more knots in a man's business than a whale can tie
in a harpoon-line. There ain't no justice in it--only pickin's and
stealin's. Why, I had a mate once that was downed on T wharf in Bos'n
and robbed, and they caught the men, and the mate couldn't give
witness bonds and they locked him up with 'em, and the men got away
one night and wa'n't ever caught, and the result was the mate served
a jail sentence before they got his bonds matter fixed. It was just
the same as a jail sentence. He had to stay there."
Hiram was fully as doleful in regard to the possibilities of the law.
"Once they get old Soup-bone behind bars on them trespass cases,"
he said, "he'll stay there, all right. They'll fix it somehow--you
needn't worry. I reckon they'll be arrestin' him any minute now.
They've got cases enough marked down."
"We'll see about that," snapped the Cap'n.
He buttoned his jacket and hurried into Hiram's team, which was at
the door. And with Hiram as charioteer they made time toward the
Crymble place. Just out of the village they swept past Constable
Zeburee Nute, whose slower Dobbin respectfully took the side of the
highway.
"Bet ye money to mushmelons," mumbled Hiram as they passed, "he's
got a warrant from old Alcander and is on his way to arrest."
"I know he is," affirmed the Cap'n. "Every time he sticks that old
tin badge on the outside of his coat he's on the war-path. Whip up,
Hiram!"
From afar they spied the tall figure of Dependence Crymble passing
wraithlike to and fro across the yard.
"Thirty days per sashay!" grunted Hiram. "That's the way they figger
it."
Batson Reeves would have scrambled down from the top of the woodpile
when he saw Cap'n Sproul halt Crymble in his weary labor and draw
him to one side. But Hiram suggested to Mr. Reeves that he better
stay up, and emphasized the suggestion by clutching a stick of
stove-wood in each hand.
"Crymble," huskily whispered the Cap'n, "I put ye here out of a good
meanin'--meanin' to keep ye out of trouble. But I'm afraid I've got
ye into it."
"I told ye what she was and all about it," complained Mr. Crymble,
bitterly.
"It ain't 'she,' it's--it's--" The Cap'n saw the bobbing head of
Nute's Dobbin heaving into sight around distant alders. "All is, you
needn't stay where I put ye."
Mr. Crymble promptly dropped the three sticks of wood that he was
carrying.
"But I don't want you to get too far off till I think this thing over
a little," resumed the Cap'n. "There ain't no time now. You ought
to know this old farm of your'n pretty well. You just go find a hole
and crawl into it for a while."
"I'll do it," declared Mr. Crymble, with alacrity. "I knew you'd find
her out. Now that you're with me, I'm with you. I'll hide. You fix
'em. 'Tend to her first." He grabbed the Cap'n by the arm. "There's
a secret about that barnyard that no one knows but me. Blind his
eyes!"
He pointed to Mr. Reeves. There was no time to delve into Mr.
Crymble's motives just then. There was just time to act. The blank
wall of the ell shut off Mrs. Crymble's view of the scene. Constable
Nute was still well down the road. There was only the basilisk Mr.
Reeves on the woodpile. Cap'n Sproul grabbed up a quilt spread to
air behind the ell, and with a word to Hiram as he passed him he
scrambled up the heap of wood. Hiram followed, and the next moment
they had hoodwinked the amazed Mr. Reeves and held him bagged
securely in the quilt.
The Cap'n, with chin over his shoulder, saw Mr. Crymble scuff aside
some frozen dirt in a corner of the barnyard, raise a plank with his
bony fingers and insert his slender figure into the crevice disclosed,
with all the suppleness of a snake. The plank dropped over his head,
and his hiding-place was hidden. But while he and Hiram stood looking
at the place where Mr. Crymble had disappeared, there sounded a
muffled squawk from the depths, there was the dull rumble of rocks,
an inward crumbling of earth where the planks were, a puff of dust,
and stillness.
"Gawd A'mighty!" blurted Hiram, aghast, "a dry well's caved in on
him."
"I told him to find a hole and crawl into it," quavered the Cap'n,
fiddling trembling finger under his nose, "but I didn't tell him to
pull the hole in after him."
Mr. Reeves, left free to extricate himself from the quilt, bellowed
to Mrs. Crymble and addressed the astonished Nute, who just then
swung into the yard.
"They murdered that man, and I see 'em do it!" he squalled, and added,
irrelevantly, "they covered my head up so I couldn't see 'em do it."
Mrs. Crymble, who had been dignifiedly keeping the castle till the
arrival of the constable, swooped upon the scene with hawk-like
swiftness.
"This day's work will cost you a pretty penny, Messers Look and
Sproul," she shrilled. "Killin' a woman's husband ain't to be settled
with salve, a sorry, and a dollar bill, Messers Sproul and Look."
"I reckon we're messers, all right," murmured the Cap'n, gazing
gloomily on the scene of the involuntary entombment of the
three-times-dead Crymble. "I couldn't prove that he was ever dead
in his life, but there's one thing I've seen with my own eyes. He
acted as his own sexton, and that's almost as unbelievable as a man's
comin' back to life again."
"I ain't lookin' for him to come back this last time," remarked Hiram,
with much conviction; "unless there's an inch drain-pipe there and
he comes up it like an angleworm. Looks from this side of the surface
as though death, funeral service, interment, and mournin' was all
over in record time and without music or flowers."
Batson Reeves brought the crowd.
It was plainly one of the opportunities of his life.
The word that he circulated, as he rattled down to Broadway's store
and back, was that Cap'n Sproul and Hiram Look had attacked him with
murderous intent, and that after he had bravely fought them off they
had wantonly grabbed Mr. Dependence Crymble, jabbed him down a hole
in the ground and kicked the hole in on him.
"I've always vowed and declared they was both lunatics," cried the
returning Mr. Reeves. He darted accusatory finger at the
disconsolate pair where they stood gazing down upon the place of
Crymble's sepulture. "They was hatchin' a plot and I busted it, and
now this is what they've done for revenge. And I'll leave it to Mis'
Crymble herself, who stands there and who saw it all."
Mrs. Crymble was in a state of mind to take the cue promptly, and
affirmed the charge with an inspirational wealth of detail and a
ferocity of shrill accusation that took effect on the crowd in spite
of the lack of logic. In moments of excitement crowds are not
discriminating. The Cap'n and Hiram gazed with some uneasiness on
the lowering faces.
"They beat his brains out, gents," she screamed--"beat the brains
out of the husband that had just come home to me after roamin' the
wide world over. Hang 'em, I say! And I'll soap the clothes-line if
you'll do it!"
"Ain't she a hell-cat, though!" muttered Hiram.
"When I think of what I was tryin' to make that poor critter do,"
said Cap'n' Sproul, absent-mindedly kicking a loosened clod into the
hole, "I'm ashamed of myself. I reckon he's better off down there
than up here. I don't wish him back."
"If accused wish to say anything in their own defence it will be
heard," declaimed Squire Alcander, advancing from the gathering
throng. "Otherwise, Constable Nute will--"
"Constable Nute will keep his distance from me," roared Cap'n Sproul,
"or he'll get his everlastin' come-uppance. I can stand a certain
amount of dum foolishness, and I serve notice that I've had full
amount served out. Now you loafers standin' round gawpin, you grab
anything that will scoop dirt and get to work diggin' here."
"I don't propose to have no bill of expense run up on me," announced
Mrs. Crymble, "I've paid out for him all I'm goin' to, and I got done
long ago."
"Bereaved and lovin' widder heard, neighbors and friends," said the
Cap'n, significantly. "Now go ahead, people, and believe what she
says about us, if you want to! Get to work here."
"You sha'n't stir a shovelful of that dirt," declared Mrs. Crymble.
"You'll claim day's wages, every one of you."
"Wages is cheaper in Chiny," said the Cap'n satirically. "You can
cable round and have him dug out from that side if you want to. But
I'm tellin' you right here and now that he's goin' to be dug out from
one side or the other."
"He's dead and he's buried, ain't he?" demanded Reeves, rallying to
the support of the widow. "What more is there to do?"
"Go down to the graveyard and get that stone of his and set it here,"
replied Cap'n Sproul, with bitter sarcasm. "Go somewhere to get out
of my way here, for if you or any other human polecat, male or
female"--he directed withering glance at Mrs. Crymble--"gets in my
way whilst I'm doin' what's to be done, if we ain't heathen, I'll
split 'em down with this barn shovel." He had secured the implement
and tossed out the first shovelful.
There were plenty of willing volunteers. They paid no attention to
the widow's reproaches. All who could, toiled with shovels. Others
lifted the dirt in buckets. At the end of half an hour Cap'n Sproul,
who was deepest in the hole, uttered a sharp exclamation.
"By the mud-hoofed mackinaw!" he shouted, waving his shovel to
command silence, "if he ain't alive again after bein' killed the
fourth time!"
Below there was a muffled "tunk-tunk-tunk!" It was plainly the sound
of two rocks clacking together. It was appealing signal.
Ten minutes later, furious digging brought the rescuers to a flat
rock, part of the stoning of the caved-in well. In its fall it had
lodged upon soil and rocks, and when it was raised, gingerly and
slowly, they found that, below in the cavern it had preserved, there
sat Mr. Crymble, up to his shoulders in dirt.
"If some gent will kindly pass me a chaw of tobacker," he said,
wistfully, "it will kind of keep up my strength and courage till the
rest of me is dug up."
When he had been lifted at last to the edge of the well he turned
dull eyes of resentment on Mrs. Crymble.
"I wish there'd been a hole clear through to the Sandwich Isle or
any other heathen country," he said, sourly. "I'd have crawled there
through lakes of fire and seas of blood."
She lifted her voice to vituperate, but his last clinch with death
seemed to have given Mr. Crymble a new sense of power and
self-reliance. He hopped up, gathered a handful of rocks and made
at his Xantippe. His aim was not too good and he did not hit her,
but he stood for several minutes and soulfully bombarded the door
that she slammed behind her in her flight.
Then he came back and gathered more rocks from the scene of his recent
burial. He propped his thin legs apart, brandished a sizable missile,
and squalled defiance.
"I've just died for the fourth time--killed by a well cavin' in on
me. There ain't no hell where I've been. And if there's any man here
that thinks he can shove me back into this hell on earth"--he shook
his fist at the house and singled Cap'n Sproul with flaming eye--"now
is the time for him to try to do it."
"There ain't nobody goin' to try to do it," said the Cap'n, coming
up to him with frankly outstretched hand. He patted the rocks gently
from the arms of the indignant Mr. Crymble. "As a gen'ral thing I
stand up for matrimony and stand up for it firm--but I reckon I didn't
understand your case, Crymble. I apologize, and we'll shake hands
on it. You can have the school-house, and I'll do more'n that--I'll
pay for fixin' it over. And in the mean time you come up to my house
and make me a good long visit."
He shoved ingratiating hand into the hook of the other's bony elbow
and led him away.
"But I want my valise," pleaded Mr. Crymble.
"You leave that coffin-plate and epitaph with her," said the Cap'n,
firmly. "You're in for a good old age and don't need 'em. And they
may cheer up Mis' Crymble from time to time. She needs cheerin' up."
Hiram Look, following them out of the yard, yanked up the trespass
sign and advanced to Batson Reeves and brandished it over his head.
"Gimme it!" he rasped.
"What?" quavered Reeves.
"That paper I stood here and watched you makin' up. Gimme it, or I'll
peg you like I peg tent-pegs for the big tent."
And Reeves, having excellent ideas of discretion, passed over the
list of trespasses. He did not look up at the windows of the Crymble
house as he rode away with his brother, the squire. And what was
significant, he took away with him the neck-halter that, for
convenience' sake on his frequent calls, he had left hanging to the
hitching-post in the Crymble yard for many weeks.